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The Society of Timid Souls
Polly Morland
Are brave people somehow fundamentally different from the rest of us, or is courage something that ...
In 1942, a pianist from Manhattan convened the inaugural meeting of an extraordinary new fraternity, which promised to inoculate stage fright sufferers against the terrors that afflicted them. The venture, which coincided with the terrifying height ...
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Lost, Stolen or Shredded
Rick Gekoski
The stories behind the disappearances of some of our most famous works of art - and some that never ...
Like Sherlock Holmes's dog in the night time, sometimes the true significance of things lies in their absence. Rick Gekoski tells the very human stories that lie behind some of the greatest losses to artistic culture - and addresses the questions such disappearances raise.Some of the ...
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Clarks: Made to Last
Mark Palmer
The story behind an iconic British brand that is approaching its double century
Clarks'reach extends to all corners of the globe and yet it remains a family-owned business firmly rooted in its Quaker origins, (unlike other well known Quaker firms like Cadburys, now part of US giant Kraft.) Founded in 1825 by two brothers, Cyrus and James Clark, the company began as a rug-making operation in the ...
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The Elimination
Rithy Panh
An eye witness account of one of the darkest episodes of the late twentieth century, the era of the ...
From 1975 to 1979'Comrade'Duch was in charge of S 21, the security prison at the heart of Pnomh Penh where 12,380 people were tortured and executed, having confessed to imaginary betrayals of the regime. After his film S21, which brought survivors and executioners from the ...
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The Great War: 1914-1918
Peter Hart
A masterful history of the First World War, covering all areas and explaining the technology and ...
The Great War was the first truly global conflict, and it changed the course of world history. Empires fell, others were crippled and new contenders emerged. Economies crashed, and millions would be affected by the Depression that followed. ...
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Gallipoli
Peter Hart
A gripping, revisionist account of an epic tragedy, the battle of Gallipoli.
'The scene was tragically macabre: the image of desolation, the flames spared nothing. As for our young men, a few minutes ago, so alert, so self-confident, all now lying dead on the bare deck, blackened burned skeletons, twisted in all directions, no trace of any clothing, the fire having devoured all.'Vice Admiral P...
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Confronting the Classics
Mary Beard
Drawing on thirty years of writing about Greek and Roman history, Mary Beard takes us on an ...
Mary Beard is one of the world's best-known classicists - a brilliant academic, with a rare gift for communicating with a wide audience both though her TV presenting and her books.In a series of sparkling essays, she explores our rich classical ...
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The Measure of Civilisation
Ian Morris
A unique insight into the index of social development that measures change in East and West - and ...
InWhy the West Rules - For NowIan Morris argues that to understand the development of East and West, we need to look beyond'long-term lock-in'theories (that suggest it was inevitable) and'short-term accident'theories. Instead, we need to measure ...
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Invisible Romans
Robert C. Knapp
Rome's invisible inhabitants - prostitutes, innkeepers, housewives, priests, freedmen, slaves, ...
Robert Knapp seeks out the ordinary people who formed the fabric of everyday life in ancient Rome and the outlaws and pirates who lay beyond it. They are the housewives, prostitutes, freedmen, slaves, soldiers, and gladiators who lived commonplace ...
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Underground, Overground
Andrew Martin
Paperback published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the London Underground
Why is the Victoria Line so hot? What is an Electrical Multiple Unit? Is it really possible to ride from King's Cross to King's Cross on the Circle line?The London Underground is the oldest, most sprawling and illogical metropolitan transport system in the world, the result of a series of botch-jobs and ...
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Calories and Corsets
Louise Foxcroft
An enlightening and entertaining social history of how we have tried (and failed) to battle the ...
Today we are urged from all sides to slim down and shape up, to shed a few pounds or lose life-threatening stones. The media's relentless obsession with size may be perceived as a twenty-first-century phenomenon, but as award-winning historian Louise Foxcroft shows, we have ...
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The Wonderbox
Roman Krznaric
What three millennia of human history can tell us about how to live today
There are many ways to try to improve our lives - we can turn to the wisdom of philosophers, the teachings of religions or the latest experiments of psychologists. But we rarely to look to history for inspiration - and when we do it can be surprisingly powerful.Showing the lessons that can be learned from the past, cultural ...
